[2] The Democratic Party became uncompetitive away from the Lake Michigan coast as the upper classes, along with the majority of workers who followed them, fled from William Jennings Bryan's agrarian and free silver sympathies.

[6] Consequently, these historically Democratic counties became virtually the most Republican in the entire state, and became a major support base for populist conservative Senator Joe McCarthy, who became notorious for his investigations into Communists inside the American government.

The state's populace's opposition to Communism and the Korean War turned Wisconsin strongly to Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.

For the 1956 rematch, Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II began by campaigning against Eisenhower's handling of farm problems, at a time when most of the interior United States was suffering from a severe drought.

As of 2020[update], this remains the last time a Republican has carried Wisconsin by double digits, as the state would trend Democratic beginning with the 1958 midterm elections, although Democrats have subsequently won Wisconsin by double digits just three times – Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2008.